Word: einsteinium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...researchers at the University of California's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory were attempting to synthesize an entirely different isotope when mendelevium 258 was created. A team led by Nuclear Chemist E. Kenneth Hulet was using the laboratory's heavy ion linear accelerator to bombard a tiny amount of einsteinium (a transuranium element discovered in 1952) with alpha particles which consist of two protons and two neutrons. "We expected the alpha particles to join with the heavier isotope of einsteinium," says Hulet, "and then decay by a process called 'electron capture' to fermium...
Delightful Half Life. Because the most recently discovered transuranium elements decompose quickly, the scientists hurriedly analyzed the einsteinium target after the bombardment. To their surprise, they discovered a minute amount-fewer than 30,000 atoms-of a mysterious and heavy isotope, which they later identified as mendelevium 258. Even stranger, the isotope-unlike many of its transuranium counterparts -appeared to be in no rush to disappear. The California scientists eventually determined that its half life (the time in which half the atoms of an element decay) was nearly two months. This compared, for example, with only eight seconds for lawrencium...
...atomic bomb; in 1951 Seaborg and McMillan received the Nobel Prize for their discovery. Working in a University of California laboratory, Seaborg and his associates gradually extended the periodic table of elements, usually named their discoveries for their place of origin (americum, berkelium, californium), or for fellow scientists (curium, einsteinium, fermium). But Seaborg modestly discounts his achievements: "It was just a matter of being there. After all, we had the cyclotron...
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